“Is that why the soldier was executed?” she asked. “Because he was resistant?”
“He was ill of mind,” I said, trying not to remember Corporal Endo’s adolescent, pockmarked face. “And obviously dangerous. You should be thankful for what was ordered for him.”
“I am only thankful for what he did. I am happy for my sister now. I don’t cry for her anymore. And I am hoping that someone like you will do the same for me. That is why I ask if you know what the captain wants. If I’m to have the same misery, then I would beg you, as a countryman, to take your gun from your holster and put me down right now.”
“I am not your countryman,” I said to her, pushing my chair back as I rose. “And I will certainly do nothing of the kind. Please stand back now.”
“But what if I were attacking you?” she said, stepping forward. “What would you do then? If I took one of those surgeon’s blades from the cabinet, and I rushed at you with it, you would have to, yes? You would have to shoot me.”
“I will not be shooting anyone,” I said to her, almost shouting, my hand hovering at my side, grazing the pistol handle. “I am a medical officer. I have never fired at another human being, much less a young woman. I hope I will never have to. You had better go now and get your things. I am ordering you to do so. I order you!”
But she stepped forward again and her hands, pale-white and small, lunged out for my throat, my eyes. I had to step aside and then strike her across the chin with the ball of my open palm, and she fell awkwardly and hit her head on the steel leg of the examination table. I was shocked with how hard I had struck her, and it was a half-minute before I could get her to regain consciousness. When she did and opened her eyes she began crying, from the smelling salts, certainly, but also, I thought, from her realization that I had not in fact shot her dead.
“I didn’t intend to strike you so forcefully,” I said to her. “I am sorry. But you gave me no other choice.”
“Why won’t you help me?” she said, raising herself out of my grasp. Her mouth was bleeding, as she had bitten her tongue on falling. “If you have any compassion you will help me. You should know I won’t let him do anything to me. I won’t. I will kill myself before that. Or I will kill him first somehow, and then myself.”
I let her words pass as she got to her feet, and I decided that I ought to escort her to Mrs. Matsui’s tent to get her things immediately and lodge her inside the makeshift quarters. I was to lock her in the surplus supply closet, which was a lightless space with a narrow door and an iron loop for an old-style brass lock, the kind typically used on a cabinet or chest but this one quite large and heavy. The idea of confining her like this seemed somewhat more reasonable to me now, for it seemed she ought not to be allowed to roam freely about the infirmary or the camp. But it was the first time I had actually spoken at length to any of them, and then in my childhood language, which stirred me in an unexpected way. As we walked to Mrs. Matsui’s tent and back I felt a certain connection to her, not in blood or culture or kind, but in that manner, I suppose, that any young man might naturally feel for a young woman. This may sound ludicrous, and even execrable under the circumstances, but I was youthful and naive enough that I possessed much more of a kind of hard focusing than any circumspection, which one may argue has remained with me for my whole life.
But I could not lock her inside the supply closet. It had no slatted window or other means of decent ventilation, and with the rays of the afternoon sun directly hitting the outer wall, I feared she might die of heatstroke or else suffocate in the cramped, lightless space. So as often as I could during the day I allowed her to stay with me in the examination room. She was weary from not sleeping the night before and lay down on the floor while I attended to my usual administrative work for Captain Ono. I knew that he could stop by at any time, but somehow I was not thinking about that chance. I was thinking only of K. She did not speak very much, nor ask any more about me, and after some time I turned to see that she had finally fallen asleep, her knees drawn up toward her chest. I stared at her for quite a long moment, taking in her figure and loosely fisted hands and the serene, pale oval of her face, when she slowly opened her eyes. She did not otherwise move. She merely met my gaze and acknowledged it, and then fell asleep again, her breathing light and even. Or perhaps, I thought, she had never really awoken.
If someone had asked me then what I felt, I would have been unable to answer. But if I can speak for that young man now, if I can tell some part of the truth for him, I would say that he felt himself drawn to her, drawn to her very presence, which must finally leave even such a thing as beauty aside. He did not yet know it, but he hoped that if he could simply be near to her, near to her voice and to her body — if never even touching her — near, he thought, to her sleeping mind, he might somehow be found.
12
FOR THE BETTER PART of the next four days our company was undisturbed, the whole of the infirmary standing empty. On those mornings I awoke especially early, finishing my camp-wide duties as soon as I was able, and by nine o’clock or so I could hurry back to my tent and get myself in decent order. With a washcloth I would swab my neck and underarms and feet and put on a clean shirt and trousers. I rubbed tooth powder along my gums and smoothed down my crewcut hair and set my cap on straight. I made sure to empty my pistol of bullets before placing it in the holster, which I would then attach to my belt. Then I would go to the officers’ mess and ask for a half-ration of cooked rice from the mess sergeant, who would nod and not say a word. When I reached the infirmary I’d wash my hands and then mix it with two rice balls I’d saved from my own meal the evening before and make them larger, dusting them with shrimp powder.
K seemed to like the pink-colored powder. Not the taste so much, I suppose, which was more salty than fishy, but the fact that I had taken the time to prepare the rice balls for her, form them into rounded wedges and brightly color one corner. When she looked at them set on the paper in my hands she said, with an acknowledging tone, “All they need now is sesame seeds.” So on the next day I took a pinchful from Sergeant Takagawa and carefully sprinkled it over the rice balls. When she saw what I had done she didn’t take them from me right away (as hungry as she was) but took my cupped hands and held them for what seemed many seconds. I wished then that I could have found some strips of dried fish for her, or a partridge egg, or anything more substantial, for she appeared quite thin to me, the bones of her shoulders seeming pronounced all of a sudden and her eyes darkly sunken in her face. In fact there was a full ration of food for her at Mrs. Matsui’s, but she had refused to eat in the days before she was sent to the commander’s hut, and it was only in the time with me that she finally began relenting before her hunger.
I watched her eat on those mornings. We didn’t talk much, but rather sat in the threshold of the closet door, like people waiting for something to happen. In the afternoons, I had to leave her and lock her inside the closet again for a couple of hours, in order to complete the rest of my non-medical responsibilities, and by the end of them I began to feel anxious, as though the dwindling of the day was not coming fast enough. I couldn’t help but picture her in the closet, barely two meters square, lightless save for the sunlight pushing through cracks in the wall, the heat blooming and redoubling in the tight space. But it was not her so much that made me uneasy. I felt as if my lungs and heart were detaching, moving outward to the skin, and that this was all too obvious to everyone I dealt with. As I was checking the state and condition of the mess hall and the latrines and supply dump, ordering men to clean and organize and raze (the secondary rounds of busywork in that long, odd probation from any fighting), I was almost certain that the soldiers were sensing my impatience and discomfort. They could not know, of course, the first thing about what Captain Ono had instituted, or my own increasing involvement, and yet I thought they kept meeting my gaze, not insubordinately but with a wonder and a host of questions. Who is the one we haven’t yet seen? What is he doing with her, there in the empty sick house? Has the poor medic actually fallen for her?